The Body and Blood of Christ, June 14, 2020

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Gospel: John 6:51-58

Theme: Christ left us Eucharist; we are the body of Christ

John 6:51–58

Jesus said to the crowds: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”

The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us [his] flesh to eat?”

Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.

“Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.

“Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”

Music Meditations

Companions for the Journey

An article by Daniel Harrington, S.J., From America, the Jesuit weekly magazine:

Today we celebrate the feast often called by the Latin name, Corpus Christi, “the body of Christ.” As Paul suggests in 1 Corinthians 10, this term can have two meanings: the body of Christ that we share in the Eucharist, and the body of Christ that we form as the community of believers united with the risen Christ. The two meanings are related, and one gives depth to the other. Their combination reminds us that the Eucharist is profoundly social.

The sacrament of the Eucharist is rooted in ancient Israel’s social experience as the people of God. During its wanderings in the wilderness after the exodus, God fed his people with a mysterious bread-like substance called “manna.” By means of this food, God made it possible for Moses and the exodus generation to survive until they reached the edge of Canaan. As Deuteronomy 8 puts it, “[God] fed you in the desert with manna, a food unknown to your fathers.”

Today’s selection from 1 Corinthians 10 is a concise but very rich statement about what we do when we celebrate the Eucharist as the people of God. For most of three chapters, Paul had been dealing with the attitudes of the new Christians toward food associated with pagan rituals and with their participation in rituals involving sacrifices offered to pagan gods. Paul’s advice is complex and somewhat meandering, but quite sensitive to the realities of the historical situation and to the issues of conscience they raised. Toward the end of his argument, Paul calls on the image of the body of Christ to appeal to the social bonds that exist among Christians and to their participation in the Eucharist.

Paul first reminds the Corinthian Christians (and us today) that as members of the body of Christ they constitute one body. The body is a natural symbol and a powerful image. Consider your own body, how all its parts must work together and how no part can be hurt without the whole body being hurt. In antiquity, as today, the image of body was often applied to cities (the body politic) and other social entities. But the body of Christ is not just another social organization or another coalition of like-minded persons united in a voluntary association. It is the body of Christ. Christ makes this body different. Christ comes first. Christ makes the body. His relationship to us forms us into the body of Christ. Our vertical relationship with Christ has as its necessary consequence our horizontal relationship with one another. In that social sense we are the body of Christ.

In 1 Corinthians 10 Paul relates the body of Christ that we constitute as Christians and the body of Christ that we share in the Eucharist. Sharing the one bread and the one cup is a powerful sign of our oneness in Christ. By participating in the Eucharistic meal we express our unity with Christ and with one another. As members of Christ’s body, we affirm our identity and unity when we receive the Eucharistic body of Christ.

The Eucharist is profoundly social. In fact, Paul in his letters mentions the Eucharist only twice, here in 1 Cor 10:14-22 and in 11:17-34. In both cases it is in the context of dealing with social problems existing among the Corinthians. The social perspective does not diminish the sacredness of the Eucharist. Rather, it should enhance our appreciation of the sacrament and give greater depth to our identity as members of the body of Christ.

In today’s reading from John 6, Jesus identifies himself as “the living bread that came down from heaven,” thus linking himself with the manna in the wilderness and with “the best of wheat.” He goes on to promise that “whoever eats this bread will live forever.” In other words, participation in the life of Jesus, the living bread, is the first installment on or the inauguration of our eternal life with God. Ournparticipation in the Eucharist concretizes and energizes our relationship with Christ and with one another. As members of the body of Christ, we share in the body of Christ.

Weekly Memorization

Taken from the gospel for today's session…

Whoever eats this bread will live forever.

Living the Good News

What action can you take in the next week as a response to today's reading and discussion?

Keep a private journal of your prayer/actions responses this week. Feel free to use the personal reflection questions or the meditations which follow:

Reflection Questions

  • How do Jesus’ statements about eating his body and drinking his blood challenge you?
  • How easy is it to get snarled up in the theology of the Real Presence on this occasion?
    How can this be an intellectual exercise and a distraction?
    What message do YOU take from this gospel that you can use in your everyday life, your everyday relationship with God?
  • What is the difference for you between doing life and having life?
    What do you want from life?
    Do you think it is what Jesus wants for you?
  • What does it mean to live in Jesus?
  • This passage follows an earlier and very famous one on the feeding of the five thousand.
    How does the motif of God feeding his people enrich your appreciation of Eucharist?
  • What is the reason for keeping people from this table of life we call Eucharist?
    Whose table is it?
    Who gets to decide who is welcome at the table and who is not?
  • When you receive communion, do you think of union with Jesus or union with those around you? Both?
    In what ways do you make the Eucharist truly meaningful for those attending Mass?
  • When you receive the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, do you reflect on your identity as a member of the body of Christ?
    What is your response to this gift of Jesus?
  • Who are members of the body of Christ?
  • What are our obligations to others in the body of Christ?

Meditations

A Meditation in the Ignatian Style/Imagination:

Read Matthew 14:13-21 (The first story of the feeding of the four thousand). Imagine the scene in which the people follow Jesus to a “lonely place” and then are stranded without food. Try to place yourself in the story as one of the disciples. At which point do you become concerned enough about all these people that you speak to Jesus? What concerns you? That he crowd will become restless and angry, that it might turn on Jesus and as disciples you might get caught in the middle? Are you afraid that some will fall ill? Are you afraid that some will take food from others? How do you respond when Jesus tells you to handle the problem? What does this story reveal about my attitudes of scarcity vs. abundance? What Eucharistic overtones do you read into this story? What does this say to you about Eucharist and the world? What does this story say to you about bread (real bread) for the world and our obligation to provide it?

A Meditation in the Dominican Style/Asking Questions

Adapted from “Sacred Space”, a service of the Irish Jesuits
In the Eucharist, we deepen our relationship with Jesus, not mechanically, but by becoming more and more like him over the years. We meet God in this mysterious and dramatic way: God gives himself to us, and we try to shape our lives into a loving gift for god. In heaven there will be no Eucharist as we know it, because our bonding with God will then be complete.

So I ask myself:
How am I fostering my relationship with Jesus?
Have I become more like him? What do I need to let go of or what do I need to do to be more like Jesus?
Do I consider my life a loving gift for God? What can I change about my life that makes the gift of this life of mine more truly loving?

A Meditation on the Franciscan Style/Action:

This excerpt is from Justice Notes for Corpus Christi from the Southern Dominican Province in 2007:

“Whoever eats this bread will live forever”(John 6:51)

Each of today’s readings speaks of being fed and they lead us to think about the growing crisis of world hunger. “Rising food prices are fueling the global hunger crisis. It is taking an immense toll on the world’s poorest people, who typically spend up to 80 percent of their income on food. As many as 100 million more poor people could be made worse off by this burgeoning hunger crisis. After 30 years of progress against hunger and poverty, that is a setback that the United States and the rest of the world cannot afford to let happen.” (http://www.bread.org/learn/rising-food-prices.html [page no longer available])

“The prayer which we repeat at every Mass: ‘Give us this day our daily bread,’ obliges us to do everything possible, in cooperation with international, state and private institutions to end or at least reduce the scandal of hunger and malnutrition afflicting so many millions of people in our world, especially in developing countries.” (Sacramentum Caritatis, Pope Benedict XVI, 2007)

Did you know:

  • 854 million people across the world are hungry, up from 852 million a year ago
  • Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes—one child every five seconds.
  • 35.1 million people in the US—including 12.4 million children—live in households that experience hunger or the risk of hunger.
  • The U.S. Conference of Mayors reports that in 2006 requests for emergency food assistance increased an average of 7 percent. The study also found that 48 percent of those requesting emergency food assistance were members of families with children and that 37 percent of adults requesting such assistance were employed.

What can you do? Pick a concrete action. Do it.

Poetic Reflection:

Enjoy this lovely act of faith so movingly expressed by Mary Oliver:

“The Vast Ocean Begins Just Outside Our Church: The Eucharist”

Something has happened
to the bread
and the wine.

They have been blessed.
What now?
The body leans forward

to receive the gift
from the priest’s hand,
then the chalice.

They are something else now
from what they were
before this began.

I want
to see Jesus
maybe in the clouds
or on the shore,
just walking,
beautiful man

and clearly
someone else
besides.

On the hard days
I ask myself
if I ever will.

Also there are times
my body whispers to me
that I have.

Poetic Reflection:

This poem is just as appropriate for Corpus Christi as it is for Pentecost and for Holy Thursday. Enjoy.

"Gather the People"

What return can we make
for all the Lord has done in our lives?
We bring bread, wine, our clay dishes
and our clay feet
to this altar
and we pray that we may here
make a beginning—
that somehow in our days
we can begin to see the promises
the Lord has made us.

The promises do not always
glow with obvious light, or
overwhelm us by their obvious truth.
No matter what anyone says,
it is difficult to understand an invisible God
and belief is not always
the easy way out.

So we gather the people
and we tell the story again
and we break the bread
and in the memory of the one
who saves us,
we eat and drink
and we pray and we believe.

We gather, we pray, we eat.
These things are for human beings.
God has no need of them.
Yet he himself gathered the people,
prayed, broke bread
and gave it to his friends.

And so the invisible God became
visible
and lives with us.

(by Ed Ingebretzen, S.J., from Psalms of the Still Country)